Monthly Archives: May 2007

In the future many colleges and universities, having for the most part driven conservatives and traditionalists out of the academy, will invite them back in under the guise of multiculturalism. Rather than replacing entire religion, history, philosophy, art, and literature departments with traditionalists, they will create an academic ghetto for the conservatives and traditionalists to inhabit. These academic ghettos will be called Departments of Conservative Studies.

Some of the topics will include:

Introduction to Religion: Taught from a point of view generally friendly to Judeo-Christian religion.

Greek Spoken Language

Greek Literature

Latin Spoken Language

Latin Literature

Hebrew Language

Old English Language

The Ancient Greeks: History, Mythology and Literature, including drama, of the ancient Greeks.

Rome: History and Literature of the ancient Romans.

Jewish History: History and Literature of the Jewish people.

Christian History: History and Literature of Christian Africa and Europe up to the Enlightenment.

From Ramses to Napoleon: Pre-Modern Warfare: History, theory, practice, and literature of War from the beginnings of history to the campaigns of Emperor Napoleon.

From the Civil War to 4GW: History, theory, practice, and literature of War from the outbreak of total war in the Civil War to the present day and 4th Generation Warfare.

Muhammad and Islam: Islam’s history, ethics, literature, and way of war, its rise and fall, and its modern-day Wahhabist and Khomeinist Jihad revivals.

The Terror: From the French Revolution to the Marxist, Nazi, Maoist, and Khomeinist revolutions. The history and literature of atheist or religious, idealist, revolutionary movements and their aftermath.

Anthropology: An overview of the historical development of human Subsistence patterns, Economics, Kinship, Civic Works, Government, Religion, and Education.

Liberalism: From Democracy to Republic, History and Literature of the political will to achieve and secure individual liberties.

Religion, Morals and Ethics: The history and literature of Judeo-Christian moral and ethical thought from Genesis through Vatican II. With a brief introduction that surveys the Greek moral philosophers.

Rhetoric: The art and practice of logical thinking (including how to recognize and oppose logical fallacies) and persuasive speaking and writing.

I had to work today, on Memorial Day. The Titanium mines of Titan are a cruel taskmaster indeed. And yet I took a moment to remember those who have given all their tomorrows for my tomorrows and the tomorrows of those who are close to me. Thank you brave men and women. Thank you for caring enough to risk it all. I don’t deserve your deaths, but then none of us do. We don’t believe in human sacrifice, not our country, but in men doing what is necessary and putting themselves at risk in order to do what must be done against those who do believe in human sacrifice, the burning bull of Moloch, the suicide bombers and headchoppers and torture-murderers of the global jihad death-cult.

Read some of the stories of those who have earned the Medal of Honor, both those who died and those who lived. Here is one who has an important lesson for those who feel a conflict between their desire for peace and the realization that war has been declared against our country, and that like it or not our choice is not whether to be at war but whether to fight back against those who would slaughter us.

Alvin York did not want to go to war. He freely admits that and tells why. He says, “There were two reasons why I didn’t want to go to war. My own experience told me it wasn’t right, and the Bible was against it too…..but Uncle Sam said he wanted me, and I had been brought up to believe in my country.”

If there is anything one can say about Alvin York without fear of contradiction, it is that he was patriotic. He loved his country, and what is more, he came from a long line of patriots who had fought for their country all the way from King’s Mountain to New Orleans, Chapultepec and Shiloh. In addition to York’s direct family ancestors who had fought for their country since the Revolution, he also felt a close kinship with such frontier greats as Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston. The influence of all these patriotic ancestors, both by blood and by culture, weighed heavily on the mind of Alvin York as the day of his induction into the army moved closer and even after he got to Camp Gordon. He describes his dilemma in these words:

“So you see my religion and my experience…told me not to go to war, and the memory of my ancestors…told me to get my gun and go fight. I didn’t know what to do. I’m telling you there was a war going on inside me, and I didn’t know which side to lean to. I was a heap bothered. It is a most awful thing when the wishes of your God and your country…get mixed up and go against each other. One moment I would make up my mind to follow God, and the next I would hesitate and almost make up my mind to follow Uncle Sam. Then I wouldn’t know which to follow or what to do. I wanted to follow both but I couldn’t. They were opposite. I wanted to be a good Christian and a good American too.”

Up to this point in the sheltered life of the isolated valley in which Alvin York had lived, he had never come face to face with and had to choose between two great principles or courses of action. He had always just assumed that being a good Christian and being a good, patriotic American were one and the same thing. At least they were so closely connected that a man dedicated to one would automatically be dedicated to the other. Now he was learning it was not so in the light of what he had always been taught about Christianity and about patriotism. The complexities of theology and its application to living in a world far more complex than he had imagined, drove him to cry out, “I am a soul in doubt.”

The records in the War Department in Washington will always make it appear that Alvin York was a conscientious objector. He was not. He was a “soul in doubt” as he said. He was torn between what he thought was his duty to his country and his God. When this conflict was resolved in his mind, he never again voiced objection to fighting, killing if necessary, for his country. The petitions filed asking exemption from military duty were initiated by Pastor Pile and his mother. “My little old mother and Pastor Pile wanted me to get out,” he wrote in his diary.

“Pastor Pile put in a plea to the government that it was against the religion of our church to fight, and that he wanted to get me out on these grounds. And he sent his papers to the War Department, and they filled them out and sent them to me at the camp and asked me to sign them.

“They told me all I had to do was to sign them. And I refused to sign them, as I couldn’t see it the way Pastor Pile did. My mother, too, put in a plea to get me out as her sole support. My father was dead and I was keeping my mother and brothers and sisters. And the papers were fixed up and sent to Camp Gordon and I was asked to sign them. I knew I had plenty of brothers back there who could look after my mother, that I was not the sole support, and I didn’t feel I ought to do it. And so I never asked for exemption on any grounds at all. I never was a conscientious objector. I am not today. I didn’t want to go and fight and kill. But I had to answer the call of my country and I did. I believed it was right. I have got no hatred toward the Germans and I never had.”

Here we have a direct statement from Alvin York denying categorically that he ever was a conscientious objector. But we have another direct quotation from another book stating that “….so long as the records remain I will be officially known as a conscientious objector. I was. I joined the church. I had taken its creed, and I had taken it without what you might call reservations. I was not a Sunday Christian. I believed in the Bible, and I tried in my own way to live up to it.”

Here we have two direct statements which appear to be flatly contradictory: “I never was a conscientious objector,” and “So long as the records remain I will be officially known as a conscientious objector. I was.”

How do we reconcile these statements? Or can we reconcile them? I think we can.

Those who knew Alvin York personally knew how confused he was at that time. In that confused state of mind he interpreted the term “conscientious objector” in two different ways, as it was used by the War Department and as he saw it in the light of his church creed and the Bible. By the former interpretation he was not a conscientious objector; by the latter he was. His lack of education made it impossible for him to comprehend entirely the two horns of the dilemma upon which he was impaled. In his own writing he gives us a basis for this explanation: “Only the boy who is uneducated can understand what an awful thing ignorance is . . . . I know what I want to say, but I don’t always know just how to put it down on paper. I just don’t know how to get it out of me and put it in words.”

The conflict raged on in his mind. He was still the “soul in doubt knowing that he really wanted to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors and fight for his country, but finding no way to reconcile war and killing with his own conscience and the creed of his church.

What did this conscientious objector do to earn himself the Medal of Honor?

“The part which Corporal York individually played in the attack (the capture of the Decauville Railroad) is difficult to estimate. Practically unassisted he captured 132 Germans (three of whom were officers), took about thirty-five machine guns, and killed no less than twenty-five of the enemy, later found by others on the scene of York’s extraordinary exploit. The story has been carefully checked in every possible detail from headquarters of this division and is entirely substantiated. Although York’s statement tends to underestimate the desperate odds which he overcame, it has been decided to forward to higher authorities the account given in his own name. The success of this assault had a far-reaching effect in relieving the enemy pressure against American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest.”

The official history of the 82nd Division states that York’s exploit in the Argonne Forest “will always be retold in the military tradition of our country. It is entitled to a place among the famous deeds in arms in legendary or modern warfare.” Following this exploit which made him famous, York stayed on in the front lines in the Argonne from October 8 until November 1. It was during this time that he had his closest call. “The nearest I came to getting killed in France,” he wrote, “was in an apple orchard in Sommerance in the Argonne.” They were digging in during a German artillery barrage when a big shell hit immediately in front of them. York describes the experience: “I have dug on farms and in gardens and in road work and on the railroad, but it takes big shells dropping close by to make you really dig. And I’m telling you the dirt was flying. And then Bang!….one of the big shells struck the ground right in front of us and we all went up in the air. But we all came down again. Nobody was hurt, but it sure was close.”

After retiring, York became a tireless campaigner for education for mountain children, and eventually was harassed until his death by the IRS. It is one hell of a story. Read the whole thing.

Thank God for men like Sgt. York and all the other brave fighting men and women that have honored America with their service.

Robert Spencer will be “Blogging the Qur’an” at Hot Air for the next while. I’m unsure whether he will be blogging in chronological or numbered order, but it promises to be informative and interesting.

This is an informational message to all those who are of one religious affiliation, including Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Scientism, Atheism or Agnosticism, and wish to convert to a different religious affiliation or consider what the differences might be.

That appears to be the message of the Democrat-Controlled US Congress. Was this the platform that the Donkey Kongress was voted in on, a polymorphous yet intractable opposition to winning the Global Counterjihad combined with racing to the trough for more pork to feed the furnaces of corruption? If I had believed Nancy Pelosi for even a second, I would have thought this was going to be the most ethical congress ever!

Pork is more popular in Congress than funding the war and supporting the troops! Congress ought to love this giant porker (over 9 feet from snout to tail and weighing over 1000 pounds). Maybe the Donkey Kongress will pay $30 billion of your money and mine for it, and make small businesses pay even more to their entry level hires.

Way back in World War 2, the west saw Japan as a force for evil in the world. Unit 731, under the command of Dr. Shiro Ishii, was a perfect example of what this meant. The Daily Mail has the story.

Human beings used for experiments were nicknamed “maruta” or “logs” because the cover story given to the local authorities was that Unit 731 was a lumber mill. Logs were inert matter, a form of plant life, and that was how the Japanese regarded the Chinese “bandits”, “criminals” and “suspicious persons” brought in from the surrounding countryside.

Shackled hand and foot, they were fed well and exercised regularly. “Unless you work with a healthy body you can’t get results,” recalled a member of the Unit.

But the torture inflicted upon them is unimaginable: they were exposed to phosgene gas to discover the effect on their lungs, or given electrical charges which slowly roasted them. Prisoners were decapitated in order for Japanese soldiers to test the sharpness of their swords.

Others had limbs amputated to study blood loss – limbs that were sometimes stitched back on the opposite sides of the body. Other victims had various parts of their brains, lungs or liver removed, or their stomach removed and their oesophagus reattached to their intestines.

Kamada, one of several veterans who felt able to speak out after the death of Emperor Hirohito, remembered extracting the plague-infested organs of a fully conscious “log” with a scalpel.

“I inserted the scalpel directly into the log’s neck and opened the chest,” he said. “At first there was a terrible scream, but the voice soon fell silent.”

Not only were the victims dehumanized, treated as wood for the mill, but the experiments for which they were used were in support of weaponizing anthrax and the black plague.

Japan’s prime minister Hideki Tojo, who was executed for war crimes in 1948, personally presented an award to Ishii for his contribution in developing biological weapons. Vast quantities of anthrax and bubonic plague bacteria were stored at Unit 731. Ishii manufactured plague bombs which could spread fatal diseases far and wide. Thousands of white rats were bred as plague carriers, and fleas introduced to feed on them.

Plague fleas were then encased in bombs, with which Japanese troops launched biological attacks on reservoirs, wells and agricultural areas.

Infected clothing and food supplies were also dropped. Villages and whole towns were afflicted with cholera, anthrax and the plague, which between them killed over the years an estimated 400,000 Chinese.

One victim, Huang Yuefeng, aged 28, had no idea that by pulling his dead friend’s socks on his feet before burying him he would be contaminated.

All he knew was that the dead were all around him, covered in purple splotches and lying in their own vomit. Yuefeng was lucky: he was removed from a quarantine centre by a friendly doctor and nursed back to health.

But four relatives died. Yuefeng told Time magazine: “I hate the Japanese so much that I cannot live with them under the same sky.”

The plague bombing was suspended after the fifth bacterial bombing when the wind changed direction and 1,700 Japanese troops were killed.

Before Japan surrendered, Ishii and army leaders were planning to carry the war to the U.S. They proposed using “balloon bombs” loaded with biological weapons to carry cattle plague and anthrax on the jet stream to the west coast of America.

These days, evil is an unpopular word. It’s thought to be not wrong, so much as tacky. Good is an unpopular idea as well, but evil is just too extreme, too very too, to be believed when a simple “not good” can be substituted. However, in the face of real torture factories or experimental germ warfare death camps “not good” is simply not good enough. The least word that will suffice is “evil.”

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Customs officers at Cairo’s airport have detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said.

The officers were stunned when a passenger, identified as Yahia Rahim Tulba, told them his carryon bag contained live snakes after he was asked to open it.

Tulba opened his bag to show the snakes to the police and asked the officers, who held a safe distance, not to come close. Among the various snakes, hidden in small cloth sacks, were two poisonous cobras, authorities said.

After all… Who needs Snakes on a Plane for the in-flight movie when you can have the real thing?
h/t: Electric Venom